Sunday, August 30, 2009

The fifth anniversary is usually reckoned the first biggie, but I can't resist giving the fourth a bit of fanfare.

Thanks to my Site Meter, I've learned a lot about who's visiting my blog, and why. Relax. I can't, in most cases, identify specific visitors, unless you're using a server at work, like one regular reader who works for a local college. When I get a hit from that college's server, I'm pretty sure it's him. If you're reading me from home, and use, say (as I do), Verizon as your ISP, your IP address will vary depending on which of your ISP's local servers your traffic is being routed through at the time. I can "tag" you if I send you a link to S-AB by e-mail and you follow it back; if you have, for example, a Road Runner address, and I see a hit referred from Road Runner at your location, I'll be reasonably certain it's you. But, unless you have your own dedicated server, I won't be able to use the IP address to identify future visits from you.

I've learned from my Site Meter that upwards of ninety per cent of hits on my blog (of which I'm averaging just over 1,000 per month now) result from web searches for things other than my blog or me. Some of these are just for concatenations of words that occur randomly in different posts (Google will aggregate these); my favorite, to date, being "married Nashville women wanted for casual sex". A fair number are for terms or phrases incorporating the word "boomer". For a while, I was getting a lot of hits from India, where apparently there was some kind of on-line game going called "Play Ben Ten Boomer". "Self-absorbed" is also an attractor: I get lots of visits off searches like "how to deal with self-absorbed husband" (no, it wasn't my wife). Most of these searches, however, are for topics about which I've posted. The two most popular, over time, have been subjects on which I've unwittingly become something of a web authority.

The first of these is the Eisenhower Lock, which is part of the St. Lawrence Seaway system, which allows ships of considerable size to transit from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes. The Lock is located about two miles from my in-laws' house in Massena, New York, and, being a ship buff, I almost always visit it when we visit them. I've posted about it here, here, and here. The other is a train we sometimes ride when going to visit my in-laws, Amtrak's Adirondack, about which I've posted here and here.

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About Me

I narrowly missed being that rara avis for my generation, a native Floridian, when the U.S. Army closed its hospital in Tallahassee, shortly before my mother’s due date. She went home, and I was born in a city renowned in Vaudeville humor: Altoona, Pennsylvania. In that chilly March of 1946, the first sound to reach my infant ears from outside the hospital walls was likely the shriek of a steam locomotive’s whistle. This could explain my lifelong love of trains. Four surface crossings of the Atlantic in childhood also led to fascination with ships and the sea.

My father was in the military, so our family (I was an only child) went from place to place often in my early years. I was in England from the ages of five to eight (the first newspaper headline I recall reading is “KING DIES”; the King in question being George VI, father of Elizabeth II) and began my formal education in a rural county council (what we call “public”) school, where I probably escaped having my bottom caned only because the headmistress feared creating an international incident. Other places where I lived while growing up were Miami, San Antonio, Cheyenne, the Florida panhandle and Tampa.

I graduated from the University of South Florida (B.A., 1967) and Harvard Law School (J.D., 1970). After that, apart from two years' duty in the U.S. Army, I practiced law in New York City. I worked in law firms and as in-house counsel, and served on the boards of directors of an insurer and a reinsurer. On a volunteer basis I now write for Brooklyn Heights Blog and the Brooklyn Bugle, and also publish my own blog, Self-Absorbed Boomer, which has been described as "relentlessly eclectic." In 1991, I married Martha Foley, an historian and archivist. We live in Brooklyn Heights. Our daughter, Elizabeth Cordelia Scales, also lives in Brooklyn.